Cork Board Project Phase 5 - Sort Corks

Introduction: Cork Board Project Phase 5 - Sort Corks

Be forewarned - no dimensions here. You can make this to any size required and the images tell the whole story.

Projects involving wine corks often depend on variety by winery. One needs several types of corks selected, not pulled at random from a bin. So it helps to sort them in advance, by origin. This is a continuation of the series of Instructables called Cork Board Project, but may (hopefully) be useful to other corky aficianados.

Assumption: that you have several hundred corks from various wineries and you want to sort by winery. (Sorting is always a time-consuming task - ask any CS person.) Assumption 2: the number of corks is not impossible for humans to manage - i.e. needing automation.

So the procedure is for the user to extract corks from the bin and drop them in a series of bags, according to winery. This is never going to be efficient, but will be better than most other manual alternatives.

Step 1: Tools and Materials

Step 2: Design

The big design choice is how many kinds of corks to select at a time. It's a trade-off. More numbers mean more mistakes (human error). Smaller numbers mean cycling through the corks more times. I chose to use eight types for my selection. This was related to the size of the cork boards I was building. Your designs may differ.

The images show a simple frame with transparent plastic bags hanging from it. The frame is designed to be sturdy enough for the task, and to fit the available bags. The bags I used came with newspapers delivered. There are eight bags on the frame at a time.

The size of the plastic bags is important. Make sure the frame will fit them. Other than that, understand the idea and build to your own needs.

Step 3: Usage

Build the frame as shown, and pin plastic bags to the top, as many as needed. (N.B. if transparent bags are available, they are best.)

Next step is to decide on the chosen cork types to be selected for this pass. (Each pass may select different corks.)

The final step is the long tedious process of manually sorting the corks by winery into the different bags. But then, this step is finished - the corks are ready for putting on boards.